PHP Strings

TMoore

Hi, I'm just wondering whether when coding virtual strings in PHP,
is it better to use the literal sign like this for example:

echo "<table colspan=\"4\">"

or like this

echo "<table colspan='4'>"

Any help would be appreciated 🙂

Tom

mmonaco

It's all about you're preference... whatever makes it easier for you if you need to look at your source.

I believe the benchmarks I've seen have indicated a slightly VERY SLIGHTSLY speed advantage to using double quotes.

Typically single quotes are for constant strings and double are for anything else.

Integer values however I usually dont even use quotes at all.

But again, what it all comes down to is your preference.

Kudose

Personally, I find it easier to use single quotes for echo's. That way I dont have to worry about messing up double quotes, or escaping them.

i.e.

$name = 'Kudose';

echo '<table border="0" cellspacing="5" width="100%">';
  echo '<tr>';
    echo '<td>'.$name.'</td>';
  echo '<tr>';
echo '</table>';

Kudose

mmonaco wrote:
Integer values however I usually dont even use quotes at all.

As once said to me...putting quotation marks around integers turns them into strings.

thorpe

as everyone has said, its your preference really. however, this...

echo "<table colspan='4'>"

is actually invalid xhtml, so using Kudose's method might be better, but then again, i find it a pain in the butt to have to escape all the time.

I believe the benchmarks I've seen have indicated a slightly VERY SLIGHTSLY speed advantage to using double quotes.

i think you'll find any benchmarks would be the other way around, as anything inside double quotes needs to be checked by the parser just incase it needs to parse variables contained in it. single quoted strings do not contain literal variables.